Western Digital 12TB Gold HDD

Monday, 18 September 2017 06:10
Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

Western Digital has joined the magic 12TB crowd with their WD Gold drive. This beast of a drive has 8 platters and is filled with helium to help cooling. While the idea is wonderful, if you ever get this close to full, just image the backup job required to keep all your data safe. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a NAS full of these for sure. Due to platter density and the 7,200 spindle speed, the transfer rates on this mechanical drive reach and blistering fast at 255MB/sec. That's steller for a mechanical drive.

From a hardware point of view, the WD Gold 12 TB is similar to the HGST Ultrastar He12 12 TB hard drive: both are based on the fourth-generation HelioSeal technology that uses eight perpendicular magnetic recording platters with a 1.5 TB capacity for each platter. The internal architecture of both HDDs was redesigned compared to predecessors to accommodate the eighth platter. Since the WD Gold and the Ultrastar He12 are aimed at nearline enterprise environments, they are equipped with various sensors and technologies to protect themselves against vibration and as a result, guarantee sustained performance.